


Mirrors

by After_Baker_Street



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Confused John, Confusion, Is it magic?, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Surreal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:45:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/After_Baker_Street/pseuds/After_Baker_Street
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is dead. John is in a deep depression, walking the streets of London. Then he sees a reflection in a shop window that may change everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All I See is You

The day was dishwater grey, the sun once again refusing to make an appearance over London’s damp and chilly streets. _No surprise,_ thought John Watson, huddling low in his oversized coat. He refused to give in to the shiver building at the base of his spine. _It’s not that cold,_ he told himself, but the truth rattling around at the back of his mind was that if he started to shiver now, he’d never stop, he’d go on shaking until his bones clattered apart.

The shops were open, but the streets were mostly empty. John’s only companion, as usual, was his flickering reflection in the windows he passed. He never looked over, in the last few months he’d started hating what he saw. The dark hollows under his eyes, the sunken cheeks. He felt old, his warm honey hair fading to ash. The last time he looked in a mirror, he was frightened by the visible outline of his skull, the boniness of his shoulders. He was fading.

So John had started avoiding his reflection, avoiding the truth. It was easy. He spent so much time avoiding things that it was nearly second nature to add this one to the mix. The fact was, there was really one one thing he couldn’t face. All the others were part of the whole. And that truth never got any easier to swallow. And that was the fact that his best friend, Sherlock Holmes, was dead.

Like his reflection, that truth followed him everywhere, like it or not. It made itself known as he sat drinking tea, pressed against him as he was filling out patient records. It went home with him at night, wound around his legs while he showered, ran its fingers through his hair as he watched telly, and finally crawled into bed with him at night. All the while it cried, _Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock._

_No, please,_ he begged as it coursed through his blood, as it beat painfully out of time with his heart, as it settled into the marrow of his bones.

_No, no, no._

Compared to that, ignoring his reflection was spectacularly easy, which is why he didn’t have his guard up. He glanced at the movement in the shop window and his eye caught on the face there.

_Sherlock?_

Time fractured, tore itself apart. His thoughts were burning, suddenly incoherent and screaming.

A pale face in the window, haloed by dark curls. Staring right at him.

It was, unmistakably, Sherlock Holmes. 

> You're my reflection and all I see is you  
>  My reflection, in everything I do  
>  _\- Justin Timberlake, "Mirrors"_


	2. Probably Both

John’s breath catches painfully in his throat. Heart pounding, adrenaline sharpening, slowing everything around him. The grey world flashes technicolor.

Unbidden, his hand reaches for the glass.

He breathes the name he does not dare even think.

“Sherlock?”

His voice is a small, tremulous thing. Sherlock’s face looks so pained John feels he cannot bear it, the icy eyes welling with tears. His glance flickers to the hand Sherlock lifts to reach for his; long, pale fingers reflected in the glass.

And he’s gone. The only hand in the window is John’s own.

 _What?_ , he thinks, mind reeling.

It is not the first time he thinks he has seen Sherlock. Those first few weeks, John saw him all the time, in the whirl of a long coat, the back of a dark head bobbing through a crowd. But it never was him. John learned to stop chasing those coattails, seeking the tall man in the next train car. But that was nothing like this. He had _seen Sherlock_.

Or so he thought. Now that the world seemed determined to snap back to a normal pace, he couldn’t be sure. Reality crowded in, light and sound vying for his attention.

A shopgirl had seen him, apparently staring at his reflection, and taken a few steps towards the window.

John lowered his hand.

 _Oh god,_ he thinks, _pull yourself together, Watson._ He feels, not for the first time today, that he may be dying. Or going mad. Maybe both. Probably both.

His knees feel weak. He braces himself against the doorway, wipes away the cold sweat from his face.

His left hand is trembling.

He gives himself no time to recover, because if he stops, if he dares let his mind begin to work on what just happened, he might as well save himself the time and collapse on the street now, because that’s certainly what it will lead to.

He shakes his head, trying to throw off grief threatening to smother him, and limps home. He will remember his cane next time.

*

A small, fair-haired man looks strangely out of place on the high street. If he caught the eye of anyone passing in the sparse traffic, he’d be easily forgotten. Everyone could see the tatty green coat, the plain trousers. No one would detect the gun in the waistband, or the clever surgeon’s hands shoved in his pockets. They’d see the drawn look on his face, the feverish eyes, and look away. It is a gruesome thing, pain of the size that it is impossible to ignore.

 

 

> So now I say goodbye to the old me, it's already gone  
>  _Justin Timberlake, "Mirrors"_


	3. An Echo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimmering reflection of someone that can’t be there at all

> If you ever feel alone...  
>  _\- Justin Timberlake, "Mirrors"_

John stands in the cascading water, driving out the chill that seems to settle into his bones every time it gets the chance. He often finds himself under the spray of the shower, slightly dazed and not totally confident he can recall how long he’s been there. Sometimes he only comes to his senses when the water is starting to grow cool. Today, he scrubs himself with near-painful force, efficiently, as he did during his long-past military days. He is determined that he’ll get out, that he won’t spend another afternoon ignoring his phone, pacing the flat aimlessly, as though he’s looking for something and can’t quite remember what it is. He certainly isn’t going to spend another day curled in his chair, making many cups of tea and occasionally allowing himself to think someone will walk through the door. 

In truth, the water is too hot, but he has grown used to ignoring his body and the petty comforts it demands. He turns the tap off with a sudden movement, more violent than he intended. Anger always seems to be waiting somewhere just beneath the surface of his sadness.

He steps carefully out of the tub, mindful of his disobedient leg. He quickly towels off, gets out his shaving things. He doesn’t shave enough these days, ignores the shadow of soft grey and honey stubble until someone comments or it grows uncomfortable.

He swipes his hand across the steam-fogged mirror. A smear of dark where there ought not be. John spins around, quickly, to see only the closed door behind him. He looks back, into the glass. Yes. Something there.

He wipes away at the clinging fog with a left hand that trembles so badly he can barely control it.

Where his face should be, a pale specter. A glimmering reflection of someone that can’t be there at all.

“Sh-Sherlock?” John whispers quietly, afraid he could somehow scare off the vision. He wipes at the glass again with his steady hand, and wipes away the still face of his long-dead flatmate.

Looking into his own eyes feels like a sharp blow to the gut. John collapses against the sink, knocking razor and shaving soap to the tiled floor.

He goes down hard, head hitting the edge of the sink. He doesn’t have time to bring his hands up to break his fall, and his impact with the floor is enough to knock the breath from him. His vision starts to go dark and he hears an answering whisper, an echo, a murmur. 

“John?”


	4. The Thousand Faces of Grief

 

> My mirror, staring back at me
> 
> _\- Justin Timberlake "Mirrors"_

 

Sorrow has a thousand names: grief, a thousand faces. John Watson feels he has known enough of darkness that surely it knows him as well. Maybe that’s why it comes to him so easily; why tragedy follows him, why he sinks beneath dark waters every chance he gets to swim towards light.

John settles himself on the sofa, beneath a tatty quilt, thinking if he could sleep, just for a few moments, maybe he wouldn’t be so tired. Another part of him knows that just isn’t true; he’s tired way deep down to his soul; tired of trying; tired, even, of living. He tries to keep busy, he really does, but exhaustion is with him everywhere he goes. So he lies there, feeling like he’s fading, like he’s eroding somehow beneath the weight of his grief.

He doesn’t make it long. Ten minutes, maybe. Irritated with himself, with his utter uselessness and dysfunction, he throws off the cover and paces the flat. He takes a ragged breath and he urges himself to stand still, running his hands over his scalp. It’s hardly swollen, where he knocked his head so badly just a few nights ago.

Looking out the window over Baker Street, John sees nothing, though his eyes are wide open. He still hears his dead flatmate calling his name. Taking a breath, he hides his face behind his fingers.

“Sherlock?” he asks the empty room, hoping against hope for an answer. There is none. Nothing at all until John looks up, into the reflection in the window glass, to find it isn’t his own.

Sherlock Holmes peers back, silvery blue eyes kind on John. A sob tears itself from John’s throat, despite his efforts to hold it back. He reaches for the window, ragged voice calling.

“Oh god, I miss you,” he tells the pale, tortured face.

“Miss _you_ ,” Sherlock answers.

John feels weak.

“They say,” he chokes out, “they say I should just move on.”

“Move on,” his friend urges him.

“No, no.” John insists, his voice tiny in the empty flat. He falls to his knees, shaking, hot tears streaming down his face.


End file.
